Winifred had looked all over the castle for Ambrose. After Bilius Clogg-Spleen had teased her about Ambrose fancying her (even though he most certainly did not fancy her, Ambrose did not fancy any at all as far as Winifred knew) she decided he might be the best candidate to ask about her most recent project. Whether or not things would go as planned she could not be sure. But given the boys in her year and the ones she would be willing to practice with, Winifred had eventually decided he was the very best choice.

After not locating him in the castle, Winnie decided that he must be outside. The day was very nice and when the day was nice most boys liked to be outside. (Like yesterday, Niko had ended up being outside too.) The Hufflepuff knew that he enjoyed animals, so her very last place to look was where the magical creatures were kept for care of magical creatures class. (A class she most certainly did not take and was not ever going to take given her level of klutz.)

It was not long before she saw him, and Winnie beamed, jogging over to where he was standing. "Goodness Ambrose!" she exclaimed. "I've been looking everywhere for you. Why on earth are you out here?" Winifred reached up and pinched her nose. "Those animals stink. It smells like poop!" She hated how most animals stank like poop. Big ones anyway. Not cute little animals. Life fluffy dogs or her precious little kitten Lord Fluffybutt. Lord Fluffybutt never ever stank. He always smelled like a dream!

Ambrose peered curiously at the fire crab[1] and its unusual coloured shell, before selecting something it might like to eat from the basket. Apparently he wouldn't cover them until his fifth year, but due to his recent interest in the subject since beginning it this year, he had asked the Professor about it. As long as he didn't cast spells down here, he was pretty much safe, he figured, and so were the animals.

"Goodness Ambrose!" He suddenly heard Winifred exclaim, and drew away from the crab. "I've been looking everywhere for you. Why on earth are you out here? Those animals stink. It smells like poop!"

"Freddie, oh, hi, er, I suppose its because they don't have anywhere else to go, y'know?" Ambrose offered in response, caught off guard and staring at the way Winifred was holding her nose.
"I wanted to look at the fire crab, despite the smell, surely you can see the shell's really pretty?" He gestured to the tortoise like creature.

Taking pity on her, he tilted his head and they walked a little way away, at least to become down wind of the menagerie. He placed the basket full of rotting vegetables down by the fence too.

"What's up? Are you at a loose end too?" He asked his friend. "Oh, that'd be good, I could do with practising that spell from charms the other week, y'know, aaahspendio or whatever its meant to be." He raised his wandless hand as if to cast the spell without it.

1.

The fire crab looks like a tortoise with a jewelled shell which can shoot fire out of its rear end. It is constantly in danger of being killed for its shell, which unscrupulous wizards will use as cauldrons. The fire crab is native to Fiji, where there is a coastal reserve set aside for its protection (FB). Fifth years, for their Care of Magical Creatures O.W.L., had to demonstate how to feed and clean out a fire crab without sustaining serious burns (OP31).

"I guess," Winnie said, eying the pen. Why weren't they litter trained or something? Cats used litter, and she knew that dogs could be trained for it. Even rats could be taught to use little miniature litter boxes! She was glad, though, when they moved downwind from the stink. "The shells are pretty," she agreed. Kind of pretty anyway. But she liked Ambrose enough to agree with him on that point so that he wouldn't feel so awkward about it.

"Ascendio," Winifred corrected him. "Yeah, that class was kind of a bust, wasn't it?" she asked. "I'd be too afraid to practice that one on my own. You weren't having much there either. But at least I didn't blow anybody up!' she added, tone much more positive.

Winifred reached up to twist a bit of hair around her finger, studying her friend. Now that she was here, she was having second thoughts about asking him questions in reference to snogging. "I've been doing a lot of practicing lately," she said. "Studying and stuff. Professor Trishna almost took fifty points from me so I promised I'd work hard and do better so that he would only take twenty. It's been fun though." Kind of fun, anyway.

"Hey Ambrose, can I ask you something?" she fidgeted awkwardly, not sure how this was going to turn out. "Have you... snogged anyone before? I mean you don't have to answer if you don't want to, ya know?"

"Have you... snogged anyone before? I mean you don't have to answer if you don't want to, ya know?"

Ambrose was a little surprised to say the least, and then blushed.
"Er, no, I er, haven't." He admitted quietly, staring at Freddie's feet and hunching his shoulders. "My Mum said it would all happen at some point, probably after I grew a bit, cos apparently girls like taller boys?" He shrugged and looked up at Winifred for confirmation.
"Apparently its rather nice, dad said." Ambrose's eyes focused past Freddie a moment as his mind pushed aside thoughts that he no longer saw his parents exchanging a kiss on evenings before dinner as a family in the holidays, ever since the start of the summer holidays last when she'd had a horrible memory charm accident and couldn't remember them at all.
 
"What about you? You ever snogged anyone Winnie?" He asked, and rearranged his feet a little nervously.

Winnie heaved a sigh of relief. Thank goodness! She wasn't the only snogless third year! She watched as he dropped his gaze and blushed- and refrained from giggling or poking fun at him for it. When he asked if she had ever kissed anybody- Winifred paused for a moment.

She wanted to tell him that she definitely snogged loads of boys, just because she didn't want to seem like a loser for having never done it all. But he had admitted that he had never done it- and Winnie really didn't want to lie to her friend. But it was important to her that people didn't think she was a loser.

Besides she had told Dax Fayette she could snog whoever she wanted whenever she wanted regardless of what he said or thought. "I haven't either," she finally confessed. "I was talking about it with Dax and he says that third years aren't old enough. But I don't want to have to wait until my fifth year before I try it, ya know?" Because really two more years was an incredibly long time! She would be sixteen then! Nobody waited until they were sixteen to kiss somebody!

"You ever think about how awful it would be if you really messed up your first kiss and you were made a fool of and then everyone in the school made fun of you?" Winnie continued. "I'm really afraid of that. I bet you get dumped if you can't kiss good. That'd be an awful way for your first real boyfriend or girlfriend to go..." she trailed off.

"You ever think about how awful it would be if you really messed up your first kiss and you were made a fool of and then everyone in the school made fun of you? I'm really afraid of that. I bet you get dumped if you can't kiss good. That'd be an awful way for your first real boyfriend or girlfriend to go..."

Ambrose nodded.
"First kisses are kind of a big deal aren't they?" He asked, screwing at the ground with the toe of his boot beneath his jeans. "But isn't it a first kiss between people that's the good part - I mean first kiss ever is important too, but I think the first kiss is bound to be the worst because you don't know what you're doing." Ambrose changed foot, dislodging tufts of grass in the soft damp earth.

"Be good if there were like things you could do to practise. One of the fourth years said he'd been kissing his pillow the other night to try. But a pillow doesn't talk, unless you enchant it, and then, how is it really going to know?" He tugged at the sleeves of his jumper a little self consciously.

"Ha, its not like you can really ask a friend for an honest opinion... could you?" The last two words of his sentence were posed to Winnie with unusual curiosity. The forth year kissing his pillow, had said he should kiss his other friend on purpose to see - only they were both boys and had both fallen about guffawing over the suggestion.

"Well, the way I figure it you're gonna end up kissing so many people before you grow up that the first one won't really matter at all. And yeah, definitely got to be the worst. I don't think it'd be very romantic if I broke my boyfriend's nose the first time I tried to kiss him because I didn't know what I was doing."

She giggled at the image of smooching a pillow. "Yeah, Dax told me you practice on your hand. But I don't think that would work too well either." Enchanting a pillow or your hand to tell you whether or not you were good at kissing sounded really complicated anyway. Winnie would likely blow up her pillow if she tried, or it would start shouting and the whole Hufflepuff house would know exactly what she was up to.

Then he mentioned asking a friend an honest opinion. Winifred shrugged. "I guess you could- you know, if you had a good friend you could practice with that wasn't a boy... or a girl," she added, thinking of herself. "I think it's something that would be important to practice..."

Winifred fidgeted awkwardly, too. "You know... if you wanted, maybe I could help sometime?" Wow, that was a really weird and awkward way of putting it. "I mean- we totally don't have to be boyfriend and girlfriend or anything. Bilius Clogg-Spleen told me that you fancied me, but I know he doesn't know what he's talking about. So that isn't anything we have to worry about. I want my first boyfriend to be an upper year anyway..."

"We wouldn't have to tell anyone, either," Winifred suggested. "That way nobody would have to pick on us or anything. I don't think that everyone else in our year would be very nice about it. There's lots of mean people in our year." She couldn't stand it if Roxanne Cross or Bilius Clogg-Spleen had another excuse to pick on her.

"Bilius Clogg-Spleen told me that you fancied me, but I know he doesn't know what he's talking about. So that isn't anything we have to worry about. I want my first boyfriend to be an upper year anyway..."

Ambrose's eyes went out on stalks. Billy had said what? He liked Freddie, but he hadn't ever thought to flirt with her or anything because she was his friend, and had been for some time now since first year. But even if he had thought of it fleetingly, Winifred trampled over it in the latter part of her sentence.

"We wouldn't have to tell anyone, either, that way nobody would have to pick on us or anything. I don't think that everyone else in our year would be very nice about it. There's lots of mean people in our year."

Ambrose caught himself, and considered Freddie's offer suddenly with great curiousity.
"No, we wouldn't have to tell anyone either." Unless of course, it turned out that Ambrose was the world's best kisser and Winifred declared her undying love for him there and then. Ambrose could dream, couldn't he - it could be worse than having your best friend declare that, surely?

"I don't think they'd be nice about it either. Especially Billy." He frowned and pouted slightly. "Its not like he's kissed anyone. I don't think he could reach without standing on a bucket." Ambrose blushed a little, and shuffled his feet.
"So, urhm, are you like, serious, that you want to practise, urhm, kissing with me?" He asked Winifred. "Nobody ever wants to practise anything with me, they think I'm going to cause them an injury."

Suddenly his mind regurgitated Freddie's earlier comment about breaking someone's nose, and was momentarily scared. You couldn't break anyone's nose by kissing them, surely? Not unless you head butted them, ooh Merlin, that was a possibility. He subconsciously felt for his own nose, which had been broken in his first year, but patched up in the infirmary as good as new.
"Like, out here?" He asked, curious.

Winnie covered her mouth to hold back a laugh. "More like a ladder!" she added. "Not that it would help him much, whether Bilius Clogg-Spleen had a bucket or a ladder nobody would want to kiss him. He smells like cabbage!" Billy did not actually smell like cabbage- but Winifred liked to tell people he did. She had learned that whether or not it was truth people would agree with her if they disliked him enough. It might not be very nice to make Billy's life even more unbearable, but he deserved it.

She shrugged. "Why not practice with you?" she countered. "There aren't many other third years I could practice with. Blake is Ayla's Property, ya know. And Bilius Clogg-Spleen is gross. And Baxter is mean and Nikolas is... well... Bilius' best friend so I just couldn't ask him. Besides, we're good friends! Friends are supposed to help each other out and stuff. And I know you won't fall in love with me while we're kissing, will you?" (As much in love as third years could possibly be at any rate.) "Cause if you do that it's just going to mess it all up and I won't be able to practice kissing you anymore."

Her final statement begged the question- How long would they need to practice? Winifred had no idea how many times you had to kiss or for how long you had to do it to become skilled. And just because they thought of each other as being good at kissing, they were going to need second opinions. Winifred wasn't sure how she'd find someone to be her second opinion- but she would figure that out when it came down to it.

"Out here?" she repeated. He wanted to practice... right away? "Well, I mean, we don't have to start practicing right now. It's not necessary or anything like that. We could... do it some other time." Although if they put it off, Winifred wasn't entirely certain she would maintain any level of courage in the matter "Did you want to try it... now?" she asked, plucking awkwardly at her skirt.

"Out here? Well, I mean, we don't have to start practicing right now. It's not necessary or anything like that. We could... do it some other time. Did you want to try it... now?"

Ambrose looked round behind them and bit his lip worriedly.
"Well, not here, here." He replied, and suddenly seized Winifred's wrist and hurried her round the back of a tree. His heart was beating very quickly all of a sudden as they stood very close behind it to be obscured from anyone casually passing by and glancing at them.

He had thought about kissing girls very much over the past few months, who could blame him, it was all part of nature. He'd laid in bed considering who might be nice to kiss amongst the girls in his year, and then had been too tongue tied to talk to them the next day, given what he'd been thinking. Freddie was right, they were able to trust each other as friends, he didn't feel quite so tongue tied and worried around her, and actually he felt a bit excited.

Dropping her wrist, he shook his hands and gave a bashful grin before giggling.
"Sorry, I didn't mean to startle you, its just if Billy suddenly appeared, we'd never live it down, ever. Actually, we'd have to become girlfriend and boyfriend just to stop him from realising what we were doing." A little colour flushed to his cheeks.

"So, are you ready?" He asked Freddie, reaching and touching both her arms just above the elbows like his mother did before she kissed Ambrose on the forehead. "Try not to break my nose, right?" Ambrose asked.

Winifred felt her stomach jump when he grabbed her and dragged her behind the tree. They were very, very close, and suddenly Winnie worried whether or not this was as brilliant of an idea as she had originally expected it to be. She absent mindedly rubbed her wrist as he said something about them having to be boyfriend and girlfriend if they got caught.

"I don't think anybody would listen to Bilius Clogg-Spleen if he did catch us." At least she hoped they wouldn't. But given the way gossip spread around here they might repeat it anyway. "And I guess if we had no other choice there are worse people I could be forced to be boyfriend and girlfriend with." Like Billy or Baxter or Harold Knight. "But nobody really comes out here except for Professor O Morain. If he catches us then we have worse things to worry about."

Ready? Winifred gulped, and shuffled forward a few inches. "Yeah- as ready as I guess I'll ever be," she told him. "And don't worry, I won't break your nose! Hang on a second, though," Winifred reached into her pocket and pulled out a small box of mints. She handed him one. "Dax told me that you have to be sure that you have nice breath because otherwise you can taste everything the other person has been eating," she explained.

Winifred chomped on her mint and sucked in. It felt minty fresh in her mouth. "The boy is supposed to kiss the girl," she told him- she had quickly lost some of her courage now she was faced with having to put up or shut up. "So... yeah."

"Yeah- as ready as I guess I'll ever be, and don't worry, I won't break your nose! Hang on a second, though," Winifred reached into her pocket. Ambrose stared, not wanting to delay this sudden bout of confidence. Freddie pulled out a small box of mints and handed him one.

"Dax told me that you have to be sure that you have nice breath because otherwise you can taste everything the other person has been eating,"

"Eww, gross." Ambrose scrunched up his nose at the thought. "Though I sort of wouldn't mind reliving the chicken pie..." He could always do a suitably large belch later... Obliging to eat the mint, Ambrose chewed on it merrily as Freddie chewed on hers. Together they sounded like a horse very glad of a treat.

"The boy is supposed to kiss the girl, so... yeah." Ambrose stared up at her a moment, still chomping on the mint, and thought about things a moment. Ten minutes ago he'd been staring over the fence with a basket full of vegetables that were beginning to go soft, and now he was potentially kissing a girl. That didn't make sense, at all. He was not only scared stiff, but very excited at the prospect of kissing which the boys would talk about at night in the dormitories, and Ambrose felt very irritated that he hadn't done yet.

"Really?" He asked, somewhat rhetorically, and finished off his mint, his heart thumping in his chest as badly as it did just before he had to perform a spell he knew his mouth was going to stumble over and cause him unwanted pain.

Here goes...

He went to put his hands on Winifred's arms, chickened out, went on tip toes and leaned forwards, and ducked out sideways.
"Argh, I'm sorry, hang on... Its just like, y'know, don't want it to be soooo awful, even with you, like?" Breathing out a heavy minty breath, he summoned his courage again, clasped Winifred's arms just above the elbow with both hands, and leaned forwards to kiss her.

Winifred scrunched up her nose. "I wouldn't want to taste chicken pie in someone else's mouth. That's probably gross." Boys. They could be so... weird. Girls would never think about wanting to taste chicken in a boy's mouth when they were kissing them. (Would they?) "It wouldn't taste th same," she added. "It'd taste like bad breath or something. Like if you forget to brush your teeth at night and wake up with a gross mouth." Yes, exactly like that. Hence the mints!

Winifred felt slightly offended whenever he said "even with you". What did he mean, even with her? But she didn't have too long to let her feminine sensibilities get the best of her before he was trying again. He leaned forward to kiss her, and Winifred- instead of closing her eyes all properly- watched as he leaned in.

The human face looked weird so close. She couldn't concentrate on what he looked like and on kissing him though, so Winifred snapped her eyes shut. Winnie puckered up and smooched him loudly- probably a bit too loud. That wasn't so hard. "What's the big deal about that?" she asked, pulling away and smacking her lips. "That's not even that much fun. It's like kissing your mum or dad. I guess that's why boyfriends and girlfriends had to start kissing with their tongues."

"What's the big deal about that?" Freddie asked, after it happened. "That's not even that much fun. It's like kissing your mum or dad. I guess that's why boyfriends and girlfriends had to start kissing with their tongues."

Ambrose was a bit confused, and in some ways agreed with Freddie - only he hadn't felt it on such an abstract and intellectual level, he'd felt something in his stomach, right down to his toes, and up the back of his spine. The feeling he felt on those rare occasions his obliviated mother seemed to recognise him and wrapped her arms around him on a visit - where he could almost believe she remembered him as her son. The same feeling he felt when he had received his first bike for Christmas when he was little, the joy of knowing the bright red bike was his, and it had been what he had wanted for months and months.

"Tongues?" Ambrose echoed, not quite hearing Winifred straight. He was puzzled, how did someone kiss with tongues, that was just weird. Like sticking your tongue out at someone and touching the ends, or licking them, eww.

"I think we need to try again." Ambrose said swiftly, and leaned in to kiss Winifred on the lips again, hoping to catch her before she pouted like someone's grandmother.

Winifred was going to explain to Ambrose what she meant about kissing with tongues, when he leaned in to kiss her again. The Hufflepuff girl closed her eyes this time, and kissed him back. The second time it felt less awkward than it had the first, but she still wasn't entirely satisfied that kissing was all the rage the upper years made it out to be. The second time also lasted a bit longer than the first time- she hadn't pulled away immediately after, but parted her lips from his much slower.

She opened her eyes to look at him again, blushing slightly. Part of Winnie wanted to elaborate more on the kissing with tongues thing she had mentioned, but opted against it. It did sound pretty gross, and Winnie figured she should probably wait until she was older to practice that one. Or at least wait until she found someone who didn't seem so freaked out by it.

"Do you think we're doing it right?" she asked instead, taking half a step back and pulling on the ends of her hair. Maybe she needed to kiss someone else just to be sure. "D'you feel anything?" Winnie added, not realizing the question might be a bit awkward and hard to answer. "In romance novels when boys and girls kiss it makes it sound like something really awesome and undescribable happens. Like music plays and the world spins and all that stuff." None of that had happened to her. Which meant something was wrong- she just had to figure out what was wrong, and who was making the mistake here.